This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Join writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg as he talks about his life, his work in television and radio and his highly acclaimed new novel, Grace and Mary. In the novel, John visits his ageing mother Mary in her nursing home by the sea, and mourns the slow fading of her mind. Hoping to shore up her memory, he prompts her with songs, photographs and questions about the 1940s, when she was a young woman and he a child in a small Cumbrian town.A fundraising event in aid of the The Shell Guide Trust - Cumbria edition. Adults £15 Children £7 (r.orrison)… (more)

Event location: The Old Laundry Theatre

Jun

6

Melvyn Bragg will introduce and answer questions about his new novel "Grace and Mary"

Mostly set in northern Cumbria, it is the story of four generations and two remarkable women, a mother and the daughter she scarcely knew. Its themes are the power and the loss of memory, and of courage the consequence of passion.

Tickets £5 (redeemable as a £5 voucher when buying the book at the talk). Available from Bookends Carlisle and Keswick. (r.orrison)… (more)

Lord Melvyn Bragg: The Book of Books The Radical Impact of the King James Bible Monday 25 July Wesley Chapel | 2.30pm A lecture event by Lord Melvyn Bragg to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. Lord Bragg sets out to persuade us that the King James Version has driven the making of the English-speaking world over the last 400 years, often in the most unanticipated ways. He argues that while many think our modern world is founded on secular ideals, it is the King James Version which had a greater legacy. The King James Bible not only influenced the English language and its literature more than any other book, it was also the seedbed of western democracy, the activator of radical shifts in society such as the abolition of the slave trade, the debating dynamite for brutal civil wars in Britain and America and a critical spark in the genesis of modern science. Tickets: £10 (harrogatefestival)… (more)

Tickets £8 To a degree all creative writing is autobiographical. Most writers draw to some extent on their own experience to create character and narrative. But when does fact become fiction and fiction fact? The narrative arc of Melvyn Bragg's most recent quartet of novels (The Soldier's Return to Remember Me) closely mirrors the author's own well-publicised story. Here the broadcaster, writer and novelist explores the subtle interplay between the imagined and the real in the creation of fictions and telling of stories. (DeadGoodBooks)… (more)